Environmental Change, Human Resources and Organizational Turnaround

Research on turnaround has largely focused on the impact of retrenchment and repositioning, and has paid less attention to the impact of changes in the task environment and human resources on recovery from decline. Moreover, all of the empirical research on turnaround has been conducted on private organizations. We develop a new model that is derived from theories of environmental and human resource effects on organizational performance. We apply this model to failing school districts in Texas, and find that turnaround is influenced by changes in the munificence and complexity of task environments, and the appointment of a new chief executive and front-line staff.     

Kompromiss im Solarstreit zwischen EU und China

At the end of July 2013 the photovoltaic (PV) trade conflict between China and the European Union was resolved through a compromise whose key elements are price and quantity undertakings promised by China. A minimum price and a maximum export quantity should help to calm PV markets for the time being. Yet the fundamental disequilibria which led to the trade conflict persist. China needs to address its huge domestic excess capacity by reducing subsidies for PV production while vigorously promoting installation. Industrial countries need to address the mismatch between national PV subsidisation policies and the dynamics of global PV markets. If unresolved, further trade conflicts will be inevitable. In solving their bilateral problems, China and the EU have largely bypassed the WTO regime for conflict resolution, thus further revealing the weaknesses of this regime.     

On the nonexistence of universal information structures

This paper extends the nonexistence result of Heifetz and Samet (Games Econ. Behav. 22 (1998) 260-273). They have shown that there exists no universal knowledge space to which every knowledge space can be mapped in a knowledge-preserving manner. We show that an analogous nonexistence result holds in the more general context of information structures. These structures can be viewed as generalizations of knowledge spaces that describe non-probabilistic beliefs.     

CONSERVED ENERGY SUPPLY CURVES FOR U.S. BUILDINGS

Comparison of nine conservation supply curves for electricity shows that fully implementing a series of energy efficiency measures will result in annual saving of 734 billion kWh (BkWh). This is 45 percent of 1989 U.S. building sector electricity use of 1627 BkWh and represents a $29 billion saving. When translated to units of conserved carbon dioxide (CC CO₂), this annual saving is 514 megatonnes, which is 10 percent of the total 1989 U.S. carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from all sources. Implementing additional fuel efficiency measures would result in further potential saving of 5·2 quads of fuel (natural gas and oil) per year, or another 300 megatonnes of CO₂, at a net savings of $20 billion. Fuel switching (replacing electric resistance heat with on-site natural gas combustion) would produce annual saving of another 74 megatonnes of CO₂ at a net saving of $6·8 billion. Thus, total CO₂ saving from these combined efficiency measures are 890 megatonnes at a net saving of $56 billion per year.     

Do people behave in experiments as in the field?—evidence from donations

Laboratory experiments are an important methodology in economics, especially in the field of behavioral economics. However, it is still debated to what extent results from laboratory experiments are informative about behavior in field settings. One highly important question about the external validity of experiments is whether the same individuals act in experiments as they would in the field. This paper presents evidence on how individuals behave in donation experiments and how the same individuals behave in a naturally occurring decision situation on charitable giving. While we find evidence that pro-social behavior is more accentuated in the lab, the data show that pro-social behavior in experiments is correlated with behavior in the field.      

Rational probation decisions for juvenile delinquents

Assuming a risk of innocent conviction and fully rational individuals, the current study addresses the effects of immediate punishment and probation rules. Strict dominance of a probation rule requires that the judicial system is highly unreliable and, at the same time, learning over criminal careers is strong. Else, an optimal punishment scheme can always be based on either regularly offering probation or appropriate immediate punishments. Received: July 2000 / Accepted: November 2001 RID="*" ID="*" The authors gratefully acknowledge valuable comments by three anonymous referees and the US co-editor of the journal.